Gov't disability crackdown shows brutal austerity

Angus McAllen writes that Gov't disability crackdown shows brutal austerity.

The policy of using government testing to judge people “fit to work” has been used with devastating impact in Britain. In 2012, the Daily Mirror reported that thousands of people had died because they had been deemed “fit to work” and taken off welfare entirely.

Under this vicious policy, more than half of the 300,000 applicants were rejected. Thousands of people also perished while they waited, on lower rates of welfare payments, to be assessed by the government.

The policy Australia now seeks to implement has led to the deaths of thousands of people with disability or illness in Britain and is likely to do the same here.

This shows the brutal logic of austerity. To face down a global crisis of accumulation, government is seeking to off-load social services and social reproduction onto ordinary people, with no regard for the cost.

The human results are all too obvious. What is also obvious is that this inhumane policy and policies like it, which target the young and the disabled, are the logical conclusion of a society that puts profits before people.

Emphasis Mine

At least, the disabled are not being euthanised. Yet.